Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library
The heritage of family films of the Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library has been the subject of a census project promoted by ICAR-Istituto Centrale per gli Archivi since 2017 with the aim of starting a mapping of the archival realities that deal with the preservation of family films throughout Italy. The project envisages a general description of the heritage of the individual archives and the valorisation of some of the film fonds preserved, through in-depth archival work and multimedia editions that make some collections of family films accessible on the Ancestors Portal, in the section Family Histories.
The editing and video edition were carried out with the Klynt software, a platform that allows the user to consult the film collections in an innovative and interactive way, following their chronological sequence or building alternative paths. The video edition is made up of a selection of the films that make up the film collection, accompanied by introductory signs and explanatory captions that allow the images to be contextualised, also providing precise information on the people, places and situations represented, and which are the result of an archival process of research, cataloguing and documentation.
(Edited by Karianne Fiorini)
Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library
The Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library has been operating in Sardinia for over fifty years as a service for the promotion of film and audiovisual culture, establishing itself as a public, cultural and educational audiovisual infrastructure. Since 1988 the Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library has been an active member of the European Children’s Film Association (ECFA) and of the FIAF (Fédération Internationaledes Archives du Film), the organisation that brings together film archives from all over the world. Over time, the Sardinian Film Library has built up an archive of films (in all media) that constitute Sardinia’s audiovisual historical memory. In recent years, it has equipped itself with state-of-the-art equipment and laboratories for restoration and digitisation techniques of all audiovisual formats, from film to magnetic and digital. Today it is internationally considered a centre of excellence and is the most comprehensive archive on Sardinia on the island. Over time, the Sardinian Film Library has become a service organisation for citizens, cultural operators and schools. The Sardinian Film Library’s cultural policy is also focused on the construction of Sardinia’s audiovisual historical memory, through an articulated action of preservation and knowledge (cataloguing, festivals, exhibitions) and cultural programming for schools and associations (assistance, consultancy and training).
The preserved heritage
The Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library has promoted the project “Your memory is our history”, a regional campaign aimed at building an archive of the private and family memory of Sardinians. The project involves the recovery, conservation and valorisation of the films made by all those who, up to 1985, recorded images on 9.5mm, 16mm, 8mm and Super 8 film to document the habits and anniversaries of their family life, daily moments and ceremonies, places and traditions, faces and gestures, journeys and holidays, sporting activities and celebrations. In addition to these, there are films – in the same formats – amateur, documentary or fiction, made during leisure time or as part of the activities of cultural associations, political, trade union, social and religious groups, schools, institutions or workplaces. To date, the archive, which is based in Cagliari, contains about 9,500 reels that form a corpus of unpublished and valuable audiovisual material for the study of local history and memory, the culture of a place and its inhabitants, and social, economic, anthropological and landscape development.
The videos
These are the videos that can be consulted of some of the funds preserved at the Humanitarian Society – Sardinian Film Library :
The rituals of a family from Cagliari – Francesco Vodret Collection
Girolamo Sotgiu, family and politics – Girolamo Sotgiu Collection
Elio Del Piano between documentary and fiction – Elio Del Piano Collection
Cultural life and popular traditions in Sardinia – Felice Tiragallo Collection